Trade Me Hands the CEO Job to an REA Chief

Trade Me has named Kul Singh Kargil, REA Group’s former chief commercial and marketing officer, as chief executive, with Anders Skoe leaving at the end of September. Kargil is a New Zealander coming back after 25 years away, and he takes the job from a Nordic classifieds specialist who ran the company for seven years under Apax.

The chair welcoming him, Owen Wilson, ran REA Group until 2025. That is the through-line the appointment notice does not spell out.

Trade Me Hands the Job to Kul Singh Kargil

On 19 August 2026, Trade Me said Skoe will step down at the end of September and that Kargil, previously REA Group’s chief commercial and marketing officer, will replace him. Skoe later wrote that Kargil takes over in late September, with time to overlap before Skoe finishes.

Wilson, speaking as chair, treated the change as a planned handoff rather than a shock. He said Skoe had decided the time was right to leave and return to Europe after seven years.

On behalf of the Board, I want to extend our deepest gratitude to Anders for his outstanding leadership and dedication over the years. He leaves Trade Me in a strong position for future success.

Owen Wilson, Chair, Trade Me statement

Wilson also said the board was thrilled to welcome Kargil, citing operational experience and a record of business growth. Kargil, in the same statement, said Trade Me had been part of the fabric of Aotearoa for more than two decades and that he felt privileged to lead it into its next era.

REA Group had already moved. In early July it said Katrina Konstas, joining from Afterpay, would become chief commercial and marketing officer from 1 September 2026, and that Kargil would finish up at REA in August. REA chief executive Cameron McIntyre said Kargil had shared the decision with him earlier in 2026, which means the Trade Me move was in train well before the August notice.

The Chair Who Used to Run REA

Wilson is not a distant non-executive who happened to sign a press release. He left the REA Group chief executive job in 2025. In November 2025, Titan Parent New Zealand, Trade Me’s parent, appointed him as a director. By August 2026 he was speaking as Trade Me chair.

Kargil spent more than a decade inside the company Wilson used to run. He joined REA Group in 2015 and held leadership jobs in Australia and Southeast Asia before the commercial and marketing brief. At REA he was known as Kul Singh. Trade Me’s notice uses Kul Singh Kargil.

That pairing is the part of the story that sits behind the homecoming line. Skoe was hired in 2019 as a like-for-like classifieds chief from Norway’s Finn.no. Kargil is a commercial operator from Australia’s dominant digital property company, coming in under a chair who used to run that company.

Property is also where Trade Me has been spending. In June 2025 it took a 50 per cent stake in Stuff Digital, the business behind stuff.co.nz, and put Trade Me Property branding on Stuff’s property section first, with motors listed as a later question. Homes.co.nz was bought in 2021. Autograb, a vehicle data business, went from a 51 per cent stake in 2023 to full ownership in July 2024.

A chief trained on realestate.com.au’s commercial machine is a logical hire if the next chapter is about extracting more from listings, agents, and audience, not about rebuilding a general auction from scratch.

Skoe Goes Home After Seven Years

Skoe’s own account is domestic. After seven years as chief executive in New Zealand, he wrote, his family had decided it was the right time to move back to Europe to be closer to extended family. “No one leaves a job like this easily,” he said. He added that he was working with the best team of his career, that the business had real momentum, and that there was a growth plan he believed in.

It has been a privilege to lead Trade Me and work alongside such a talented and passionate team. I am immensely proud of everything we accomplished together to serve our customers and our community. The company is in a strong position and I am delighted to hand the baton to Kul.

Anders Skoe, Chief Executive, Trade Me statement

He also called Kargil a Kiwi coming home after a strong run at REA in Australia. His thanks list ran through Apax, the board, and customers across Property, Motors, Jobs, and Marketplace, which is still how the company describes itself.

Skoe arrived as a classifieds specialist. Trade Me Finn.no chief and Nordic marketplaces head when it named him in April 2019, with a start later that year. He had joined Finn in 2010, became its chief executive in 2016, and on 1 January 2019 added the Nordic marketplaces brief at Schibsted, covering Finn alongside Sweden’s Blocket.se and Finland’s Tori.fi. Schibsted said he would leave those jobs on 1 July 2019 and relocate with his family. Before Finn he spent 15 years in the United States, including time at Google, and he has an engineering background.

Jon Macdonald, the outgoing chief at the time, stayed until Skoe landed and then moved to a non-executive director seat. Macdonald had already planned to leave at the end of 2018 and was asked to remain through the Apax scheme. The 2019 handoff and this one both come with an overlap, not a hard cut.

The 2019 Buyout That Took Trade Me Private

Kargil is walking into a company that has been private for the whole of Skoe’s time in the job. Funds advised by Apax Partners, with co-investors, completed the purchase of Trade Me Group on 7 May 2019 at NZ$6.45 a share, a deal that valued Trade Me at about NZ$2.56 billion (then about US$1.7 billion on 31 December 2018 rates).

THE 2019 APAX DEAL

• Equity price: NZ$6.45 a share, about NZ$2.56 billion in equity value.
• Enterprise value: NZ$2.74 billion, a 27 per cent premium to the one-month average price to 20 November 2018.
• Multiple: About 16.7 times underlying F18 EBITDA of NZ$164 million, or 19.7 times EBIT of NZ$139 million.
• Scale then: More than 600 staff, about 1.8 million visits a day, 7 million listings, and the fourth most visited website in New Zealand.

Mitch Truwit, then co-chief executive of Apax, called Trade Me the clear leader in its market and pointed to the firm’s other digital marketplace holdings. The 2019 notice listed Auto Trader in the United Kingdom, Trader Corporation in Canada, Boats Group in the United States, Idealista in Spain, and SoYoung and SouFun in China, and called Trade Me the eighth such bet.

Fairfax had bought the company from founder Sam Morgan in 2006 for NZ$700 million. It listed on the NZX and ASX in 2011 under TME, then left both boards when Apax closed. Seven years is a long hold for that kind of owner. The public books stopped in 2019, so the next buyer, if there is one, will be reading numbers the rest of us cannot see.

Who Is Kul Singh Kargil?

Kargil’s published path is commercial, not founder-operator. At REA he was responsible for commercial divisions plus audience, brand, customer experience, and marketing. Internal biographies there also put customer platforms, product, and engineering, including a SaaS and subscriptions book, under his watch. That is a listings-company P&L, not a brand-only seat.

Before REA he held senior jobs in strategy, marketing, sales, and brand at GE Capital in financial services and at GlaxoSmithKline in healthcare. On LinkedIn, as he left, he wrote, “Here’s to new beginnings, in familiar surroundings.”

KARGIL’S PATH INTO THE JOB

• REA Group: Joined in 2015, later chief commercial and marketing officer, and left in August 2026 after more than a decade.

Housing brief: Led REA’s A Home For All work on housing outcomes, which McIntyre cited when he thanked him.

• Earlier career: Strategy, marketing, sales, and brand roles at GE Capital, then GlaxoSmithKline.
• The return: A New Zealander coming back after 25 years away, taking a company he did not grow up running.

McIntyre called him an integral part of REA for over a decade and credited him with customer and commercial growth. That is the reference Trade Me’s board is buying. It is also a narrower one than Skoe’s. Skoe had already been chief executive of a horizontal classifieds business in a small, rich country. Kargil has not. His deepest operating years sit in property classifieds, which is Trade Me’s highest-yield vertical, not the general Marketplace that most Kiwis mean when they say they are “on Trade Me.”

Casual Sellers Lost the 7.9% Success Fee

The last big public product change on Skoe’s watch was aimed at that general Marketplace, and at Facebook. From 10 March 2026, Trade Me said goodbye to Success Fees for casual selling on Marketplace, ending the 7.9% cut that used to come out of each casual sale.

HOW MARKETPLACE FEES CHANGED

Ping’s standard take is 2.19% of item plus shipping, or 1.89% for Top Sellers. Trade Me said 90% of unresolved Marketplace scams in 2025 involved bank transfer, which is why that rail came out. In-trade, or professional, sellers still pay success fees. Listing extras and withdrawal fees still exist. Motors and Property keep their own price lists.

Buyers who pay with Ping now face a small service fee, which Trade Me said averages about NZ$0.99 a purchase. The company is swapping a seller tax that people could see on every sold listing for a thinner payment take plus a buyer fee, and it is doing that while Facebook Marketplace still lists for free. Kargil inherits that bet in its first year, not a stable old fee book.

Morgan, Macdonald, Skoe, Then Kargil

Trade Me has had four chiefs, and each one maps to an owner. Sam Morgan built the site in 1999 and stayed through the Fairfax sale in 2006, then handed over in 2008. Macdonald ran the Fairfax years, the 2011 listing, and the Apax close. Skoe ran the private years. Kargil is the first chief of the late-Apax period, hired by a board whose chair comes from REA.

TRADE ME CHIEF EXECUTIVES

LifeDirect was sold in 2020. The later deals, Homes.co.nz, Autograb, and the Stuff Digital stake, push the company further into property and motors data and into news audience, which is REA-shaped work. Marketplace, where the 7.9% fee came off, is the consumer brand and the Facebook problem. Those two jobs do not ask for the same chief.

Kargil takes the lot in late September. Skoe is gone at the end of the month. Wilson, who already knows the incoming chief’s last employer from the inside, stays in the chair.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who Owns Trade Me Now?

Funds advised by Apax Partners, with co-investors, have owned 100% of Trade Me since 7 May 2019 through vehicles that include Titan Parent New Zealand. The company is not listed on the NZX or ASX. Apax described the 2019 purchase as its eighth digital marketplace investment, after names such as Auto Trader in the United Kingdom and Idealista in Spain.

When Does Anders Skoe Leave Trade Me?

Skoe steps down at the end of September 2026. He joined in 2019 from Schibsted, where besides Finn.no he oversaw Blocket.se in Sweden and Tori.fi in Finland as executive vice-president of Nordic marketplaces, jobs he left on 1 July 2019. He has said the move is so his family can live closer to relatives in Europe.

What Did Kul Singh Kargil Study?

He holds a Master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor’s degree in Medical Science and Marketing from La Trobe University, and he is a graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He has also served as a director of Australian Red Cross. Those credentials sit beside, rather than instead of, the REA commercial job Trade Me hired him for.

Does Trade Me Still Charge a Success Fee?

Not for casual sellers on Marketplace, as of 10 March 2026. In-trade sellers still pay success fees of 5.9%, 7.9%, 9.9%, or 11.9% of item plus shipping, with a maximum fee of NZ$499, and their buyers do not pay the new service fee. Motors and Property use separate fee cards, so a car dealer or an agent is not on the casual Marketplace deal.

What Happened to Jon Macdonald After He Left the Top Job?

Macdonald, chief executive from 2008 until Skoe arrived in 2019, had planned to leave at the end of 2018 and stayed at the board’s request through the Apax scheme. When Skoe started, Macdonald moved to a non-executive director role. He was the bridge between the listed company and the first private-equity chief, the same kind of overlap Skoe and Kargil are running now.

Skoe still has the job until the end of September. Kargil is due in late September for the overlap. Wilson, who already ran Kargil’s last company, is the person who will judge whether a property-commercial chief can run all four verticals once the Norwegian classifieds specialist has gone home.